Originally published in SeedStage Digest (Oct 2023)
It’s easy to dismiss college founders as inexperienced. But some of the most creative and fearless products we've seen this year came from students building between classes, using campus Wi-Fi, and testing MVPs on their roommates.
What they lack in polish, they make up for in proximity to real problems — especially in spaces like edtech, community tools, productivity hacks, and student finance.
Here’s how successful student founders are navigating the early stages — and what seasoned founders can learn from them:
**1. Solve What’s Right In Front of You**
Most campus startups aren’t solving “big” problems — they’re solving immediate ones. Scheduling group projects. Paying for textbooks. Finding off-campus jobs. “I built something I wanted for myself,” said Kareem Malik, a senior at Howard who now has 3,000+ users on his class note exchange app.
**2. Use Your Campus as a Test Lab**
Universities offer a dense, captive user base. Founders who treat their school like a market — handing out flyers, testing copy in student groups, doing literal hallway demos — iterate faster than those stuck in online theory.
**3. Learn Publicly — and Ask for Help Loudly**
Many student founders aren’t afraid to cold DM angel investors or alumni on LinkedIn. “Everyone wants to help a student founder,” said Olivia Tran, who raised $30K from three alumni just by showing traction.
**4. Don’t Wait for Permission**
The best young founders aren’t waiting for incubator acceptance or a top-tier warm intro. They’re building on weekends, posting progress, and shipping *something* every month.
Their biggest advantage? Urgency and zero ego.
“I’m not trying to be a CEO,” said Malik. “I’m just trying to solve something and see if it works.”
Sometimes, that’s the whole playbook.
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